Today we’d like to introduce you to Garvin Williams.
Hi Garvin, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
THE SWEETEST FOUNDATION OF THE SHATTERED BONES:
How Poetry, Loss, and Legacy Shaped an Educator’s Journey Toward Resilience and Joy
In this intimate reflection, writer and educator Garvin Williams traces the lineage of his strength back to the people and places that raised him. Through poetry, memory, migration, loss, and rebirth, he explores the question that has shaped his life’s work:
“Whose shattered bones helped you see?”
His journey — from a struggling student in southwest Alief to the principal’s office — reveals the beauty that emerges when brokenness becomes the foundation for hope, healing, and generational courage.
In light of celebrating where I come from, I want to start with one of my greatest joys and loves… and that is poetry. It has always been the language through which my story first learned to breathe.
The sweetest foundation of the shattered bones
By Garvin Williams
I come from the mountain lion country. I have never been there, but the stories I’ve heard paint this vibrant picture in my mind.
My mother’s soup used to take me there with one spoon.
I come from rainy days to bright sunshine to gray pretend skies and huge smacks of humidity, and I love it.
I come from riding the metro bus, thinking it was my only way to taste adventure and discovery,
And at times it was.
I come from “turn to your neighbor” and “god is good all the time”
I come from laughter so deep and intense,
the ones that make you shed tears and clutch sides, the ones that come as simple as breathing.
I come from communicating without a word ever being spoken; I always knew when to shut up by the look of my parent’s eyes.
With little reminders of some air-bending slaps
I come from seeing sagged pants and real clean Nike but I wore my air-walks and my belt
I come from “go ahead” at the drive-thru with an underlying passion to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. But “I’m going to be a millionaire one day according to Mom. “
I come from a lot of passionate people, passionate people who dreamed of something much bigger than who we are.
I come from a lot of brave people, brave people who started over in unfamiliar places
I come from a lot of broken people, broken people who connected their shattered bones so that I may have a pedestal of what I can be, With just enough height to see pass the crooked streets, and the local wahoos that served the piping hot fries, and that nail salon that used to suffocate me and had the real boring magazines, passed that boba shop with the strawberry banana smoothies, passed that bus stop waiting for the number two, passed the trials and tribulations that made my foundation cement.
And I love it
I know how to find joy and appreciation in the little things
And it helps me imagine the stars past the muck of the sky that surround me, and it helps me see how we all have a beginning,
how our foundations are made up of different trials and tribulations…..
it’s almost poetic-
Take your place on that Pedestal…..
whose shattered bones helped you see?
My story can be summed up with the rhetorical question posed at the end of my poem.
THE QUESTION THAT OPENS THE DOOR
The poem ends with a question that has followed me throughout my life:
“Whose shattered bones helped you see?”
For me, that question is the doorway into my story — a story that begins on the shoulders of brave people from Freetown, Sierra Leone.
I am one of four children, raised in a home grounded in courage, resilience, and unwavering hope. We didn’t grow up with much, but what we had transcended the tangible: we had faith, grit, and always rice at home.
DISCOVERING WRITING, AND MYSELF
My entry into writing wasn’t planned. It began in 7th grade, in Ms. Hirschman’s class, with a simple poem about a breeze. For the first time, I was introduced to a part of myself that needed expression — a part that needed safety.
This was foreign because I struggled with language arts, had a speech impediment, and carried a low Lexile level. But being seen unlocked something I didn’t yet have words for.
Years later in college, finding the poet Rudy Francisco reignited that flame. His vulnerability reminded me of the freedom I once tasted in 7th grade. I picked up my pen again, and this time I didn’t let go.
HOW POETRY MADE ME A TEACHER
Poetry taught me to turn pain into healing.
To grieve.
To release.
To imagine bigger than myself
Naturally, it led me to teaching 8th-grade language arts.
Literature — when taught well — demands vulnerability. My mission became simple:
Help young people hear the sound of their voice, and help them never to forget it.
Growing up in southwest Alief, joy was something you had to choose intentionally. I wanted my students to see that joy wasn’t only possible — it was theirs, even when the world pressed against them.
LOSS, LEADERSHIP & BEGINNING AGAIN
Life has a way of shaping us through the moments that break us.
I lost my mother at 17.
I rebuilt a relationship with my father at this time in my early twenties that required me to see him fully
And as an adult, just before the school year began, I lost him too.
Each loss brought the same question to the surface:
What type of person will I be when hardship comes?
Every time, the answer remains:
I pick up my pen.
I allow myself to feel deeply, to break openly, and to rebuild intentionally.
As a principal now, my purpose echoes the same mission that poetry gave me:
Build academic strength and self-esteem in young people, even when tribulations are present. Teach them to meet their own darkness with light.
THE ANTHOLOGY: A HOME FOR THE STORY
All roads — grief, resilience, courage, love — led me to my anthology:
THE SWEETEST FOUNDATION OF THE SHATTERED BONES
It explores how forgiveness and vulnerability are the threads that bind our lives to one another. Growing up, emotional expression felt foreign — maybe it was the first-generation African man in me — but I learned that feelings, like poetry, need room to breathe.
The title honors the truth that our foundations are built on the sacrifices, losses, and unmerited brokenness of others.
Even brokenness can be sweet when it connects us to a love that is bigger than us.
A LOVE LETTER TO MY PARENTS
In many ways, this anthology is also a love letter to my parents. It took a long time, and many poems later, to come to a place where this void, regret, and deep lament were realized as a misplaced love that grew callused. But one layer at a time, one step at a time, one word at a time, I released the pieces and started again — reconciling pain then and now, and the stepping stones of learning what unconditional love is through the lens of hurt and hope. Poems about the warrior mother who raised me the best she knew how, and opened avenues to forgiving my 17-year-old self when grief wore its hat. To the new lens of evolved forgiveness, redemption, and pride I have for my father, that required a deep reflection of seeing who he was entirely. Both of them, everything mixed together, have shaped me. My parents were far from perfect, but what courage it took to love, to start over in unfamiliar places, to never give up, is the foundation that brings peace like no other.
TO THE READER
When you finish this anthology, I hope you remember the moments when resiliency, unconditional love, and forgiveness called your name — and you were brave enough to answer.
Brave enough to look at the past and the unknown
and decide:
It will not devour me.
It never had the authority to.
With every project and every opportunity I have I strive to perserve who I am, and who I am becoming.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not at all.
I was a student who struggled with reading language arts. Darn those R’s and W’s. At one point in time, I couldn’t even say my own name, let alone write poetry, teach students, or lead a campus. It took people seeing me fully in order for me to believe that I can do it. To be where I am today is a testament to the courageous people who came before me, to the people who saw, and to those who saw beyond my unbelief.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a campus Principal in Dallas and a writer. I am most proud to lead people and be a servant leader committed to growing, thriving, joyful, and learning communities. Even more, I am most proud to play my part in bringing liberty to my sphere of influence.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
My courageous parents from Freetown, Sierra Leone, Alison & Cecil, who taught me resilience like no other.
Pricing:
- Anthology 14.99
Contact Info:
- Website: https://garvinwilliams.com
- Instagram: g.williams_gatherings
Image Credits
YNW Photography
